Pat Tillman's Diary

I came across an interesting post at this blog site. I do not know the validity of the contents, but if true, more interesting issues come up that should be answered. (see: http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/2007/07/diary.html):

From a reader:

I served in Operation Desert Storm. After I got out of the military I became a police officer. Reading about Pat Tillman's death, something really stuck out to me: He kept a diary. Major red flag there. As a cop, if we had a guy in the stationhouse watching us and writing down what he saw everyday in a little black book, you can probably guess how that would go over with everyone else. Same thing in the military, even more so. There were a couple of guys who kept diaries when I served. But those were very basic "what chow we had today" etc. types of things, a way to pass downtime more than anything else. The guys who kept them were not writing about illegal wars or upcoming meetings with Noam Chomsky. One other thing, because of his high profile you can be sure Tillman's views were known up through the chain of command right into the Pentagon, which was almost certainly getting regular reports on Tillman from his superiors. And what happened to Tillman's diary? Right after he was killed it was destroyed. No surprise there.

Me: In addition to last week's report that medical examiners said the shots that killed Tillman appeared to have been fired from ten yards away, over the weekend the AP also reported that some snipers -- whose names Tillman's comrades don't remember -- arrived in a Humvee just prior to his death, got out of their vehicle, and started shooting. To be clear, I'm not convinced yet that this was anything other than an accidental death, with a subsequent cover-up (just as the Abu Ghraib story was breaking) to portray Tillman as a hero killed by hostile fire. I think that cover-up probably reached the highest levels of the Pentagon and into the White House. But let's see what we find out next....the rolling revelations continue, three years on.

Was Pat Tillman Murdered?

Several evening news shows last week skirted this question and did quit a bit of coverage on Tillman's opposition to the Iraq invasion and politics in general. He surely was not one of Chimperator Bush's mindless followers, nor was he afraid to voice his views. Now, Andrew Sullivan picks up on this question (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/was-pat-tillman.html):

I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:

O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, O'Neal said...

In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation: News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code in the Army--these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.

If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight. Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as snipers, too.

If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots - a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire until the family forced them to do otherwise.

This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that might have stirred hostility.

As I have said, I put nothing past the Bush/Cheney regime. They saw Tillman's death - regardless of the true cause - as a PR event to be manipulated. With these guys, the truth never matters. It's all a question of what spin can they put on an event.

New documents shed light on Pat Tillman's death

As you will recall, when Pat Tillman's death was announced, the regime of Chimperator Bush tried to use it as a PR event and, as it turns out, totally lied about the true circumstances (I know - Bush lie, what a shocker). Here is some of the latest information to come to light:

The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators. Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.Among other information contained in the documents:

• In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

• Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

• The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

• No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene -- no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers. With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.